Chafee makes it official

While he rode the Republican Party into the U.S. Senate (and used it to try to stay there), Lincoln Chafee has often denounced the GOP, which has moved further right in recent years, and backed liberal...

Comment

Posted Jun. 2, 2013 @ 12:01 am

While he rode the Republican Party into the U.S. Senate (and used it to try to stay there), Lincoln Chafee has often denounced the GOP, which has moved further right in recent years, and backed liberal Democrat Barack Obama in both the latter’s presidential campaigns. So it’s not exactly stunning that the liberal Republican-turned-independent governor of Rhode Island has now become a Democrat.

Still, there may be more than purely ideological reasons for Mr. Chafee’s decision. It is challenging even for governors to raise a lot of campaign cash from outside of a party structure. And polls showed Mr. Chafee faring poorly in a race for re-election as an independent.

He may have concluded that his only plausible path to re-election is to survive a crowded Democratic primary running against Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, both far more popular than Mr. Chafee has been in recent polls.

Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, considered a probable Republican candidate, must have mixed feelings about all this. He stood a greater chance with Mr. Chafee and a Democratic nominee splitting Rhode Island’s large liberal vote. Should Ms. Raimondo — someone who appeals to many independents and Republicans as well asto moderate Democrats— win the Democratic primary it could be lights-out for Mr. Fung.

On the other hand, Mr. Fung might feel good running against the comparatively unpopular Mr. Chafee as the Democratic nominee, even with Moderate Party hopeful Ken Block eating into the moderate-to-conservative vote.

Governor Chafee’s changing politics make an interesting case study. His father John Chafee, a governor and U.S. senator, was a moderate Republican able to work with both Democrats and such staunch conservatives as Ronald Reagan. Lincoln Chafee was named after the Republican Abraham Lincoln, the first GOP president.

After his father’s death, the younger Chafee relied on a Republican governor, Lincoln Almond, to appoint him to his father’s Senate seat, then he relied on Republican dollars to get elected to the job. George W. Bush’s chief political aide, Karl Rove, tried to get Mr. Chafee re-elected in 2006, but Mr. Chafee lost to an official Democrat, Sheldon Whitehouse.

Now Governor Chafee is officially a Democrat, too, something that makes local political pundits happy. The 2014 gubernatorial campaign is shaping up to be complicated and interesting.